wn that in
almost all of the cases, the women committing the violent acts
are usually retaliating for violence that their partner or spouse committed against them prior to their arrest; and in a substantial number of the cases, the violent actions were taken in self-defense (Hamberger & Potente, 1994).
Eckhardt, Barbour and Davison (1998) studied the cognitions
of men who perpetrated domestic violence, comparing them to
samples of men who were maritally distressed but nonviolent and
who were maritally satisfied and nonviolent. Methods used in the
study involved having subjects perform the Articulated Thoughts in Simulated Situations (ATSS) paradigm while listening to anger
arousing audiotapes. Trained raters coded for irrational beliefs,
cognitive biases, hostile attributional biases, and anger control
Data analyses were said to reveal that men engaging in domestic violence articulated significantly more irrational
thoughts and cognitive biases than either the maritally
distressed non-violent men or the maritally satisfied non-violent
men. Also, those engaging in domestic violence expressed more hostile attributional biases than the other two groups
...